Feral by Design

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Duration: 00:00:37

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Duration: 00:00:55

The second episode in the Feral Festive Special drifts into unexpected territory: snowflakes.
 This episode isn’t biomimicry — snowflakes don’t behave — but the pattern they form, shaped by whatever air they fall through, is the part we’re playing with today.

December has its own weather system: family dynamics, big tables, small tables, solo days, first holidays after loss, chaotic joy, quiet overwhelm — often all within the same week. And for some reason, we keep trying to control the whole thing.

Snowflakes don’t.
 They don’t plan or perfect.
 They just respond to the...

Duration: 00:08:05

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Duration: 00:00:39

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Duration: 00:00:48

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Duration: 00:00:35

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Duration: 00:01:58

Part 1 of the Feral Festive Special: the prawn. Yes, really.

This festive run goes rogue - nature-inspired, not biomimicry - a deliberately Feral detour for December's chaos. We're diving into the prawn's soft-shell phase: that blink-and-you-miss-it moment where they ditch their old shell, stretch like hell, and grow before anyone notices. Chaotic. Unprotected. Maximum transformation.

Tell me that's not peak December energy.

If you're rolling into the end of the year feeling overcooked, under-armoured, or weirdly molten inside, this episode will make you laugh, wince, and feel slightly better without trying.

...

Duration: 00:08:53

Ever taken a course, nailed the theory… and then fallen apart the moment it gets real? Same. And it turns out the fix lives in the Kalahari.

In this episode, Pia heads into meerkat country to uncover a quietly brilliant system for learning that actually sticks under pressure - not just in your head, but in your bones. No hacks. No feel-good fluff. Just nature-tested design principles for building capability in the real world, without the chaos or the panic.

From small “reality bites” to why purpose matters more than motivation, this is a surprisingly human...

Duration: 00:11:15

Ever felt that tiny stab of guilt when you toss a takeaway coffee cup into the bin, even when you’re trying to do the right thing?

In this episode, Pia takes that everyday eco-anxiety somewhere unexpected: underwater, to the mussel - a creature that quietly solves problems we’ve been wrestling with for decades.

From its renewable anchor threads comes a provocative idea for a different kind of cup altogether. Not disposable. Not forever. But something in between: a retiring cup, designed to age gracefully and work with how humans actually beha...

Duration: 00:10:57

Ever been swooped by a magpie? Turns out, you weren’t being attacked — you were being communicated with. And you probably missed the whole conversation.

Magpies avoid real fighting through communication — using graduated conflict signals to regulate tension and maintain social balance. They’ve mastered something we humans rarely do: tiered cues, pattern-based memory, and conflict used as maintenance rather than meltdown.

In this episode, Pia uses biomimicry to explore how we can handle tension more like a magpie — why every argument today trains a pattern for tomorrow; how to spot early signals before small frictions...

Duration: 00:12:06

Hooked: How Burrs Inspired Velcro — and Why Curiosity Is The Real Innovation.

Ever spent an hour on your kitchen floor pulling burrs out of your dog’s fur while questioning your life choices? Those annoying little hitchhikers accidentally sparked one of the most successful biomimicry stories in history — the invention of Velcro.

In this episode, Pia unpicks the legend — a Swiss engineer, a hunting trip, and a microscope moment that turned frustration into a global, nature-inspired design revolution. Two tiny words did it all: hook and loop.

But we’re not stopping a...

Duration: 00:10:54

Ever felt like you’re the bottleneck — the one brain trying to juggle every moving piece until the whole thing collapses?

In this episode, Pia shares a true story of running a chaotic innovation project in India… while accidentally locked in a toilet with no reception. That moment of enforced stillness led her to one of nature’s best system designers: the octopus.

Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons live in its arms, allowing it to sense, decide, and adapt without waiting for head office — a strategy that inspired The Octopus Method, a biomimicry-based approach to distribut...

Duration: 00:10:59

When you were a kid, did you ever get jabbed with a needle so big it felt like a medieval weapon? I did — the kind that left welts and trauma in equal measure.

Turns out, the real master of painless penetration was buzzing around my head the whole time.

This episode of Feral by Design dives into what mosquitoes know about pain-free design — and how their six-part mouthpiece has inspired biomimicry researchers and product designers re-thinking needles, medicine, and even human ingenuity.

It’s a classic biomimicry story: brute force vs. elegance, pain vs. pr...

Duration: 00:06:32

Tips for Dam Good Boundaries

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you’re jealous of a rodent’s boundary skills.

This week on Feral by Design, Pia Williams dives into the muddy brilliance of the beaver — nature’s original boundary engineer — to find smarter, saner ways to hold your own.

Discover:

Why most human boundaries snap under pressure (hint: we make them too rigid)How beavers build layered, flexible systems that bend instead of breakWhat "patch your leaks early" means for emotional energyWhy the best boundaries let the right things...

Duration: 00:13:04

Not another true-crime podcast… unless you count Grand Theft Bio!  In this 6-minute intro, Pia shares why she’s obsessed with stealing nature’s best strategies - a little biomimicry, a little human curiosity - and what listeners can expect from this podcast that makes nature and science feel personal and surprisingly useful. Expect short episodes that blend humour, biology, and human messiness - showing how creatures from beavers to octopuses tackle the same challenges we face every day.

If you like your insights a little irreverent, a little wild, and rooted in real research, this pod is made...

Duration: 00:06:31

Feral by Design is a podcast stealing nature’s smartest strategies for everyday chaos. Short, playful episodes grounded in science, storytelling, and human curiosity. Subscribe and join us as we see what happens when nature becomes our mentor.  

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Duration: 00:01:00